Painting a new memory

Along the Canal Saint-Martin, Chez Prune,
she painted a scene familiar to me,
from the time I’d spent years ago in this foreign city.

As she laid down her brushstrokes, gentle colours,
the cold canal and its stone-paved sidewalks
no longer looked as they had all those years.

She’d sprinkled the trees with an orange shimmer,
thrown generous blues and greens onto the frozen waters,
and left streaks of poetry on the weatherworn cobblestones.
She’d taken away the harshness, the bleak and the lonely,
and left behind nothing but simplicity and colour.
She’d taken a blank and distant gaze
and painted upon it a smile.

Across the table, two coffees away,
I sat mesmerised as her painting took form,
and scribbled down as best I could
this scene of a memory shared and remade.



- 21 December 2007